Italy

October 30, 2012

Warm sun on your skin, smooth and curving mountain roads, beautiful vistas, delightful acceleration, the rumble of the engine, and nothing on your schedule but hundreds of kilometers of Tuscan roads. That pretty much describes the privilege my friend Tim Marks and I experienced on our recent motorcycle trip through Tuscany. Let's close out this third and final installment with a short video. May you chase down your own dream roads soon! As Orrin Woodward once said, "It's not enough to dream, you've also got to make them come true!"

October 09, 2012

Part of the beauty of Tuscany is its seemingly endless supply of beautiful roads. While the main towns like Florence and Pisa can be frustratingly crowded, the rest of Tuscany is largely open countryside. It's here, out in the hills and mountains, that one really falls in love with this place. And it's on a motorcycle that one can really get to know it in a fun way.

Tim Marks and I covered more than 1000 km and experienced over 100 towns. Most of this was countryside, mountainside, hillside, sunnyside! At one point Tim said over the helmet-to-helmet radio system, "Man! It's like someone designed this area especially for what we're doing. It feels like one big motorcycle adventure park." A pretty apt description, I think.

Descriptions, however, can only convey so much. Therefore, I invite you to mount up and join us for a few minutes in this video.

October 08, 2012

In my book, A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation, I talked a little about riding a motorcycle through Tuscany. That trip, however, was mostly a family vacation, and I only logged about 400 kilometers in the course of a whole month. As any motorcycle enthusiast knows, that's nowhere near a serious amount of riding. It was a family vacation and my top priority was spending time with Terri and my four brown-eyed kids. As you can read in the book, that part worked out wonderfully.

However, while on some of those short outings and zipping around smooth, unpopulated Tuscan curves, I couldn't help erecting in my mind a return trip dedicated solely to adventures of the two wheeled variety . . . .

And so, one of my first calls was to my friend, business partner, and boondoggle buddy Tim Marks. Tim and I have embarked upon many an adventure together, including racing a dune buggy through the Baja, flying fighter planes, scuba diving, snorkeling through swim-throughs (one of the scariest of our capers, believe it or not), shooting machine guns, using kayaks to hunt muskrats, power boating, motorcycling, snowmobiling, and owning and flying an airplane together. So I knew Tim was the perfect partner for some serious motorcycle exploration through Italy. Our only challenge was the calendar. With launching a new company, building our businesses, and being heavily involved family men, the toughest challenge was finding a spot in the calendar. Finally, we settled on September of 2012. We both had over a week available, and the situation in Italy would be perfect that time of year. The summer holiday crowds would be gone, and the temperatures would likely be in the high seventies to low eighties. Perfect.

We reserved two BMW 1200GS motorcycles from the super reliable Ricardo (also featured in A Month of Italy), purchased plane tickets (first class so we could recline flat and arrive rested and ready to ride), and began the process of planning and provisioning. It was decided that we would mostly restrict our touring to Tuscany, with it's thousands of kilometers of curved roads through an extreme range of topography. This would allow us to establish a home base in one location from which to venture out each day, thereby eliminating much of the logistics and wasted time of finding new lodging every night and packing and unpacking. We chose a borgo (a type of village converted to a resort) near Siena. We also decided we'd like to see at least 100 towns in Tuscany, a detail agreed upon by two overachievers with choleric personalities that would come back to haunt us. Tim also indicated he had two additional objectives: 1) to see the leaning tower of Pisa ( Torre pendente di Pisa), and, 2) to obtain some purses of a particular style for his wife Amy. Little did we know how these last two would combine into a story of their own.

August 06, 2012

Vagobond is a cool online travel magazine we deemed worthy to include in the exclusive "Travel Recommendations" list on the A Month of Italywebsite. A special thank you to Vago Domitio, the creative force behind Vagobond, for the great review of the book. Here are some excerpts:

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The thing that most captured me as I read was the sense of how it made me feel good about the life I lead and the choices I’ve made. Chris is a hard working guy – like me. I spend a huge amount of time writing, editing, working on projects, and building a future for my wife, our daughter, and me. The thing is though, I always make sure to take the time to enjoy life too. Chris pointed out at one point that the average working American father spends an average of 37 seconds a day with their kids!!!! What?

And yet, there is much more to this book than the adventures and misadventures of an American family in Italy – instead, this book is about finding the balance in our lives between work and play – it is about the importance of taking the time to really live – and it is filled with powerful messages that every stressed out CEO or entrepreneur needs to read. The reason? Because life is sometimes meant to be fun and sometimes it is meant to be downright silly.

Ultimately, this book is about Italy and more. It’s about Tuscany, food, culture, and the misadventures of travel – but, beneath the surface, this book is about the choices we make in our lives. It is about how to be more effective in our work, more loving in our families, and how to enjoy the art of our lives – both on vacation and at home.

As to the rest – it’s an enjoyable story about traveling in Italy and it offers some funny stories, beautiful descriptions, and some inspiring moments. It’s a very good book and I recommend that you read it.

July 16, 2012

Since the release of my latest book, A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation, I have received countless connections to others who are also touting the power of vacations. Here is an article that appeared on CNN. For those of you who have read the ITALY book, you will notice some similar points!

Relax, it's only a vacation

Vacationing with no agenda -- for some travelers it's heaven, for others a week or more of unscheduled free time is like staring into an abyss.

Planning for a vacation is usually part of the fun for me, but largely skipping the research and reviews on a recent trip to Costa Rica was surprisingly refreshing.

Arriving without a bunch of expectations and a long list of things to see and do and accomplish wasn't entirely premeditated. I ran out of time, and since the friend I was traveling with is a native Spanish speaker, I felt great about being able to resolve those inevitable travel snafus. Also, we did book hotels a couple of weeks in advance. (I probably would have melted into a puddle of anxiety otherwise).

We did a lot -- zip lining, snorkeling, bird watching, tarantula spotting, sitting on the beach -- but without that gnawing sense of missing something really important. Ignorance might indeed be bliss.

Have I been doing it wrong all this time? After the trip, I consulted a trio of sages -- a travel agent, a psychiatrist and a life coach -- to see what vacationing advice they'd offer to people who want to avoid going back to work dragging, desperate for another vacation.

Maybe you don't need three professional advisers to have a nice trip, but some Type A would-be vacationers could use a little help. You know who you are.

We asked: Your vacation planning tactics

Loosening up

"If your vacation causes you stress, it's not a vacation, it's a should, a to-do or an overachieving chore," said Laura Berman Fortgang, a career and life coach and author of "Living Your Best Life."

Trying to squeeze too many activities into one trip with "no built-in time to chill" can be exhausting, especially when your trip lasts a week or less. (Ours was a weeklong trip and we visited three places. Overly ambitious?).

27 must-sees on earth

Consider this strategy, posted by enthusiastic planner Kris Stafira on CNN's Facebook page: "I usually do plan every minute of every day, but then our family sets our priorities and we make SURE we do those things -- the rest happens or not, depending on the day. I tell my kids they can relax at home -- vacation is for SEEING and DOING and LEARNING!"

Right. But what if life at home is just as busy?

Berman Fortgang recommends taking at least 10 to 14 consecutive days away, if at all possible, and building in time to do nothing.

"A week isn't a lot now. At the pace that we all go and the amount of adrenaline that we force our bodies to produce because we move so quickly -- your body doesn't really recover from that in a week," she said.

Berman Fortgang and her husband are self-employed and they shifted their family's schedules years ago to be able to take European-style, three to four week vacations in August.

"Just knowing on that sixth night you didn't have to pack up to leave, then we started relaxing," she said.

Switching off from the 24/7 work ethic

Finding flexibility

From a psychological standpoint, vacation offers time to build resiliency, according to Dr. Gregory Fricchione, director of the Benson-Henry Institute of Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The term, adopted from structural engineering, refers to the ability to bend or adapt, but not break, under pressure.

I employed a little of that when I figured out shortly after we got off the plane in San Jose that two of the three places we'd picked to visit were not in fact within day-trip distance of each other, but actually three hours apart by van and boat. (Everything looked really close on the map. This is where reading up and carefully mapping things out comes in handy.)

Strong connections with family and friends and meaningful and positive experiences bolster resiliency. Your stress response, an alert to threats that spurs you to action, is also a key component, Fricchione said.

The stress response is essential, but it burns a lot of energy, so avoiding stressors is part of what's restorative about vacation.

If you want a restful trip, ask yourself "what's a nonthreatening and socially supporting and meaningful and positive experience for me to have? And it would be different for different people," Fricchione said.

Sitting on the beach reading books is just the thing for some people. For people with highly active, risk-taking personalities that don't satisfy that side of themselves at work, an adventure trip can be very fulfilling.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with having a very busy vacation. Being outside your normal habitat has its own benefits.

"There is something rejuvenating about that in the sense that your mind is very alert, your senses are very alert," Fricchione said.

"If you enter into that experience and you're not exhausted at the beginning, it can be very energizing. It's a nice kind of stress, in a way, and you have enough resiliency to deal with it."

Fricchione suggests taking stock of how you feel and what would be restorative for you and planning your time off accordingly.

14 outstanding airport amenities

Listening to yourself

People who go for the trips they think they want instead of the type of experience they really want and need are the ones who come home needing another vacation, said travel agent Anne Morgan Scully, president of McCabe World Travel in McLean, Virginia.

"The reality is a vacation should really be about you and what your body needs, what your mind needs, what your soul needs and what your heart needs, and that drives good vacation decisions," she said.

Scully asks her clients about their best trip ever and for two reasons why they loved it. She takes those and other responses and tailors a trip to suit everyone in the group.

"We try to put a balance in what they're asking for so if there are choices and options, something is going to work," she said.

July 15, 2012

Most companies give the concept of customer service world-class rhetoric and mediocre implementation, at best. The attitude isn’t one of customer service, but rather of “customer serve us."

Just the other day, my wife Terri was in a place where for no apparent reason she was forced to take a new number and begin her wait anew, without any explanation or apology. When she finally got to the counter she was greeted with an artificial urn labeled, “Ashes of Trouble Customers.” Nice. (Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, it was actually a government office and not a bona fide business, but we’ll leave that huge topic for a future post.)

Every now and then, however, someone surprises us. When it happens, it’s as refreshing as the sunshine after a cold rain.

Observe Exhibit A: our family cocoon packed into a small minivan traveling sleepily through rush hour traffic in Rome. Scooters zip by on all sides, cars dart in and out, horns blare, and pedestrians play chicken with cars by avoiding eye contact. After three hours of hazard-avoidance, our quota is used up and we collide noisily with a passing scooter (see previous post for details). Since the incident occurred on a busy street directly in front of our destination hotel, I suggested Terri take our kids inside to safety. Within moments, I became vaguely aware of hotel employees in black uniforms extracting the baggage from our damaged vehicle. Next I looked up to see one of them bringing me a bottle of water with two fancy drinking glasses. Soon, the general manager of the hotel was standing next to me, comforting me, advising me, and reassuring me that he would provide assistance to help my with any language barrier issues.

After several hours of cleanup and paperwork, we were ushered to the hotel’s courtyard where our children were comfortably seated and being pampered by the hotel staff. We were offered drinks and informed that we had already been checked into our rooms. As a final exclamation point, I was informed that the hotel would additionally be changing my flat tire for me. “Prego, prego, we insist!” I was told.

The hotel in question? The Hotel Forty Seven. The general manager? Paolo Dalle Vacche. The employee who brought me the water and took care of my children? Piero Galli. The man who changed my tire? Valentino. I mention them all here because they deserve worldwide recognition for putting into implementation what most people only talk about – world-class customer service. Thank you gentlemen! Grazie mille!

So, do you think I’ll stay at the Forty Seven upon my next visit to Rome? Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.

When it comes to you and what you do for a living, here are a couple things to think about when attempting to provide true customer service:

Your heart matters – all the best intentions and formal training don’t amount to a thing if you don’t have a heart for thrilling your customer

Put yourself in the customer’s position – this should be obvious, but what made my experience at the Forty Seven so exceptional was the way in which the hotel staff anticipated my needs and met them.

One individual is not enough – it takes a whole culture to get it right. Not that one individual taking the lead and the initiative isn’t how a culture is built – it is – but ultimately, most of the team has to be emotionally on board and committed to authentic exceptionalism.

It makes a difference – the hotel Forty Seven didn’t merely cement their relationship with me as a customer, they made an impact on my life. Who knows what calamities they steered me clear of by their attentiveness.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but you get the idea. Can you imagine what the world would be like if companies absorbed just these five lessons deeply into their operating psyche?

All of this makes me wonder why more companies don’t get it - why they don’t truly implement the high-sounding platitudes and pronouncements that litter their flashy brochures and walls.

I have two questions for you, dear readers:

When is the last time you had an exceptional customer service experience like mine in this example?

What can you do in your business, job, or career to be like the staff at the hotel Forty Seven in Rome?

July 06, 2012

As I depict in my book, A Month of Italy: Rediscovering the Art of Vacation, one of the most interesting aspects of travel is the chance to notice things that are usually obscured by the bustle of daily living. This is even more true when traveling internationally, when so much is unfamiliar, and, well, foreign. I particularly enjoy the signs and other public displays that make it across the language barrier a little worse for wear. Sometimes, something IS lost in the translation.

June 07, 2012

One of the themes in my upcoming book, A Month of Italy, is that Americans have lost the "art of vacation." According to a recent Harris poll, only 14% of Americans take more than one week of vacation at a time, while the Center for Economic and Policy Research reported that 25% of Americans and 31% of low wage earners take no vacation at all anymore. In a 2006 survey conducted by Expedia.com it was estimated that workers would give back to their employers more than 574 million unused vacation days that year! So less people are taking vacations, while those who do are taking fewer vacations, shorter vacations, and even less vacations then they've earned!

The question begging to be asked is, why?!

In my experience working with thousands of people in business and leadership functions for almost twenty years, and supported by research from sources as diverse as "happiness experts" on one side to government agencies and pollsters on the other, there are several distinct reasons for this bizarre trend. For argument sake, and in an attempt to hopefully get you to challenge and analyze your own prevailing beliefs about vacations, sabbaticals, and leisure time in general, I hereby present my own list of reasons. If you ever get time, that is, if you're not too busy, I mean, if you can catch a break, maybe you can read through these. Or, at the worst, perhaps you can wait and go through them on your next vacation.

For what it's worth . . .

The Top 10 Reasons People Have Lost the "Art of Vacation."

10. Concern for Work Accumulation: The fear of the work that will pile up in their absence.

9. Dread of Competition: The fear that other employees will pass them up if they are gone.

8. Fear of Termination: The worry that they will lose their job or be replaced if they are gone.

7. Pride of Workmanship: The belief that nobody can do their work as well as they can.

6. Avoidance of Hassle: The perception that vacation isn't all it's cracked up to be (it's too much trouble to travel, it's a "fix" that doesn't last anyway, etc.).

5. Fear of Intimacy: A distaste for relating to a mate and/or children outside of their usual structured and frenzied lives.

4. Addicted to Consumerism - in essence, people choosing things and status over time and memories

3. Leisure Guilt: Vacations aren't seen as proper

2. The "Blackberry Effect" - with all the technology of today, people feel as if they can't really "get away" anyway.

1. Financial Inadequacy: Money is too tight.

To varying degrees, each of these reasons may have some validity. But very clearly it is necessary for human beings to do as Stephen Covey teaches in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, and that is to "Sharpen the Saw." Legitimate or not, reasons such as those in this list should not hold us back from properly unplugging and recharging (which, electrically speaking, is impossible. But in the figurative world you know what I'm trying to say!) We are not machines. Without proper rest and restoration, we lose our edge. Taken to extremes, we can lose our grip, our health, our relationships, and our ability to perform at anywhere near our peak output.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not trying to become the poster child for self indulgence, dilatoriousness, or laziness. I believe our lives are precious and our gifts are imparted to us for a reason, and neither should be wasted in mere idleness. What I AM saying, however, is that the old jingle, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is still true, and I like to think of the word "dull" there as the antithesis of Stephen Covey's "sharp."

So determine which of the above reasons may be holding you back from properly implementing restorative breaks into your schedule. Make a plan to sharpen your sword on a regular basis. Buy my book when it comes out and learn anew the "Art of Vacation." And stay tuned into this blog where I'll be bringing further information and insights into this neglected topic.